Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications networks generally, and more particularly to tracking usage of Internet based flows on communications networks.
Discussion of the Related Art
Tracking usage of telecommunications calls, sessions, and chats has conventionally been enabled by the use of call detail records (CDRs). The use of CDRs to track a telephone call has long been used to track billing information of calls placed over the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and more recently over data networks using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) based telephony. Detailed telephone call reporting is made possible by the use of CDRs allowing businesses to allocate, e.g., but not limited to, long distance, and mobile telephony call usage, as well as enabling intercarrier billing.
A CDR, also known as call data record, is a data record produced by a telephone exchange, switch, or other telecommunications equipment documenting the details of a phone call that passed through a facility or communications network device. A CDR is the automated equivalent of a paper toll ticket that was written and timed by operators to track long-distance calls for billing in a manual telephone exchange.
A CDR is conventionally composed of fields that describe the communications exchange. Examples of fields include, e.g., but not limited to, a phone number (ANI) making a call (i.e., calling party), a phone number receiving the call (i.e., called party), time when the call started (e.g., date and time), how long in time the call lasted (e.g., duration), the phone number to be charged for the call (e.g., regular, private, collect, or intercarrier, etc.), an identifier of the telephone exchange writing the record, a sequence number identifying the record, additional digits on the called number used to route or charge the call (e.g., long distance, international, area code, operator-assisted, etc.), the result of the call (e.g., whether it was answered, completed, busy, etc.), the route by which the call entered the exchange, the route by which the call left the exchange, a call type (e.g., voice, short message service (SMS), VoIP, etc.), and any fault condition encountered, etc.
Conventionally, an exchange switch manufacturer may decide which information is captured and/or tracked and formatting of the information. Standards have developed for intercarrier billing. Examples of different information provided by vendors may include, e.g., but not limited to, sending a timestamp of an end of a call instead of duration, voice-only machines may not send call type, and some private branch exchange (PBX) devices may not send the calling party, etc.
CDRs were especially useful in a homogeneous circuit switched telecommunications network. Tracking calls has become more complicated as calls are no longer exclusively circuit switched calls, but rather may travel over heterogeneous data networks, with telephony calls often carried and/or terminated on one or more ends using VoIP communications.
Calls, sessions, Internet browser hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), instant messaging, video conferencing, digital radio, and other content based services can use vastly different amounts of communications network resources such as bandwidth. However, conventional usage tracking does not track such data usage, beyond perhaps only volume of data uploaded or downloaded. Although data network usage has grown in an accelerated fashion, means to track Internet Protocol (IP) user browsing activity have been minimal at best. With increased access speeds, IP usage over time has shifted from largely an electronic mail (email) transport system to higher bandwidth, multimedia data delivery system. Various transfer protocols have enabled hyperlinked access to a vast array of multimedia content easing access to the burgeoning world wide web (WWW), using, e.g., but not limited to, hypertext transport protocol (HTTP), HTTP secure over secure socket layer (SSL) (HTTPS), browser based request response protocols using hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML), and application environments such as, e.g., but not limited to, Java, Flash, etc. Bandwidth usage has grown, fueled by widespread always online Internet service (rather than its precursor dial-up modem access), and ubiquitous handheld mobile devices including hardware devices smartphones (e.g. iPhone/iOS, Android, Windows Phone), WIFI enabled communications and computing devices, eReaders (e.g., Kindle), tablet devices (e.g., iPad, Kindle Fire, Android tablets, etc.), smart televisions, etc., and software environments, such as, e.g., but not limited to, social networks such as, e.g., but not limited to, Facebook, Linked-In, Myspace, etc., and network based offerings such as, e.g., but not limited to, cloud-based services, and video streaming services such as, e.g., but not limited to, Youtube, Hulu, Vimeo, Netflix, etc. This higher bandwidth IP session content, has grown exponentially, but means of tracking usage has languished behind. Traditional statistical sampling models using approaches such as Nielsen, Comscore, etc., have gathered aggregate scale usage information. However, conventional approaches fail to provide granularity of information to the user level. As mobile telephony service providers have found, unlimited data plans have driven wireless users to adopt similar usage patterns on mobile devices as wired online users, causing a shift to tiered-pricing based data plans to meter user utilization of resources. Conventional tiered pricing plans however can again only provide users minimal information about their usage, namely, for example, upload/download bandwidth usage on a monthly basis at a site such as, e.g., but not limited to www.my.verizon.net for Verizon wireless usage, for example.
As noted, in circuit-switched PSTN telephony, call detail records (CDRs) recorded data about a given call, but no similar data is available to track user Internet activity.
Behavior analysis also referred to as psychographics studies the behavior of users. Conventionally, behavior analysis tracks usage at an aggregated level, tracking numbers of users travelling to particular sites by analysis of log files, etc. Such information lacks details as to users, but rather tracks usage of a given site.
Advertising systems track user usage by means of cookies and the like, but such tracking does not measure all activity, since such tracking may be disabled by turning off browser based tracking.
Traffic analysis refers to a process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. Traffic analysis can be performed even when messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and stored, the more can be inferred from the traffic. Traffic analysis can be performed by law enforcement, or in the context of intelligence, military intelligence or counter-intelligence, and is a concern in computer security.
Traffic analysis tasks may be supported by dedicated computer software programs, including, e.g., but not limited to, commercially available programs such as those offered by i2, Visual Analytics, Memex, Orion Scientific, Pacific Northwest National Labs, Genesis EW's GenCOM Suite, SynerScope and others. Advanced traffic analysis techniques may include various forms of social network analysis.
In the field of telecommunications, data retention (or data preservation) generally refers to the storage of call detail records (CDRs) of telephony and internet traffic and transaction data (IPDRs) by governments and commercial organizations. In the case of government data tracking and/or retention, the data stored is usually of telephone calls made and received, emails sent and received and to the extent available by conventional techniques, web sites visited. Location data of originating and/or terminating parties may also be collected. For example, the National Security Agency seeks to perform mass surveillance or analysis of communications traffic. By analyzing retained data, governments can identify locations of individuals, an individual's associates, and members of a group such as, a terrorist cell, or the like. Such surveillance activities may or may not be lawful, depending on a region's laws, and constitutions and laws of a given country. In many jurisdictions access to such archives or databases may be made by a government with little or no judicial oversight (e.g., USA).
In the case of commercial data retention, data retained is usually transaction data, legal documents, or the like.
Data retention can also cover data collected by other means (e.g., by traffic cameras, or automatic drivers' plate recognition systems) and held by government and commercial organizations.
What is needed is an improved method of tracking detailed telecommunications network subscriber bandwidth usage and in particular greater granularity of usage for data based communications networks of such types as, e.g., but not limited to, voice networks, data networks, Cable TV (CATV), wireless, satellite, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks, etc.
In today's broadband, wireless and VoIP networking world, a user may place calls, sessions, Internet browsing sessions, or voice or videoconferencing chats from any of various non-fixed locations, complicating tracking usage for a given subscriber. Thus, an improved method of tracking usage of calls, sessions, Internet browsing sessions, voice or videoconferencing chats providing greater detailed usage information to businesses and consumers than is conventionally possible, is needed.